Bergson

Analysis versus Intuition 

At the center of Bergson’s philosophy is his conviction that there are “two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing.” The first way, he says, “implies that we move around the object,” and the second, that “we enter into it.” Knowledge derived in the first way depends upon the vantage point from which we observe an object, and therefore this mode of knowledge will be different for each observer and, on that account, “relative.” Moreover, knowledge derived by observation is expressed in symbols, where the symbol used can refer not only to this specific object but to any and all similar objects. The second kind of knowledge, however, is “absolute,” says Bergson, because in this case, by “entering” the object we overcome the limitations of any particular perspective and grasp the object as it really is.

Duration 

Bergson centered his attention upon the process in all things that he called “duration.” His criticism of classical schools of philosophy was that they failed to take duration, or becoming, seriously. For the most part, philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, and Kant sought to interpret the world through fixed structures of thought. This was particularly the case with Plato, whose notion of the Forms provides us with a static structure of reality. Even the empiricists, in spite of their preoccupation with experience, analyzed experience into static components, as in the case of Hume, who described knowledge in terms of individual “impressions.” Neither the rationalists nor the empiricists, Bergson charged, took the matter of mobility, development, becoming, and duration seriously. Just how this metaphysical notion of duration could be employed in scientific knowledge Bergson did not make clear. But he was certain that to “think in duration” is to have a sure grasp of reality. Such thought also gives us a more accurate notion of time, real, continuous time, as compared with the “spatialized” time created by the intellect. 

Only when we think of time and motion in such “spatialized” terms do we encounter the paradoxes Zeno spoke of. Zeno said that a flying arrow really does not move, because at each instant the arrow occupies a single point in space, which would mean that each instant the arrow is at rest; otherwise, it would not occupy a given space at a given instant of time. Zeno’s argument would be unassailable, says Bergson, if his assumption about space and time were correct. But he argues that Zeno was in error in assuming that there are real positions in space and discrete units of time; these so-called positions are, says Bergson, merely suppositions of the intellect, and the units of time are only the artificial segments into which the analytic intellect slices what in reality is a continuous flow. What Zeno’s paradoxes show us is that it is impossible to construct mobility out of static positions or true time out of instants. Although the intellect is capable of comprehending static parts, it is incapable of grasping movement or duration. Only intuition can grasp duration. And reality is duration. Reality, says Bergson, does not consist of “things,” but only of “things in the making, not self-maintaining states, but only changing states …” Rest is only apparent, for all reality “is tendency, if we agree to mean by tendency an incipient change of direction.” 

The “Elan Vital” 

Is not the doctrine of evolution an example of how science can successfully understand duration and becoming? After examining the major conceptions of evolution, Bergson concludes that none of these scientific theories are adequate and therefore offers a theory of his own. The particular inadequacy he found in the other theories was their inability to give a convincing account of how the transition is made through the gap that separates one level from a higher level. Darwin referred to variations among members of a species, and De Vries spoke of mutations as the conditions leading some members to possess variations favorable for survival. But neither Darwin nor De Vries explained how such variations in a species could occur; both of them inferred that either slowly or suddenly a change occurs, presumably in some part of the organism. This overlooks the functional unity of an organism, which requires that any variation in one part must be accompanied by variations throughout the organism. Just how this can occur neither Darwin nor De Vries explained, leaving unanswered the question of how there can be continuity of function in spite of successive changes of form. The neo-Lamarckian theory attributed evolution to the special “effort” employed by certain organisms, causing them to develop capacities favorable to survival. But can such acquired characteristics be transmuted from one generation to the next? Bergson insisted that although “effort” had some promising implications, it was too haphazard a notion to explain the overall process of development. Nor was Spencer’s theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics such as habits satisfactory, since, again, this seemed to Bergson to be an unsuccessful attempt to construct movement or evolution out of unchanging parts. 

Evolution, said Bergson, is best explained in terms of a vital impulse, the élan vital which drives all organisms towards constantly more complicated and higher modes of organization. The elan vital is the essential interior element of all living beings – and is the creative power that moves in unbroken continuity through all things. Since the intellect can grasp only static things, it is not capable of grasping the elan vital, because this is the essence of duration of movement, and “all change, all movement, (is) … absolutely indivisible.” Knowing, for Bergson, is a secondary activity; more basic, and therefore primary, is living. Intuition and consciousness, not analytic intellect, grasps this primary life and discover it to be a continuous and undivided process of which all things are expressions and not parts. All things are motivated by this elan vital; the elan vital is the fundamental reality. We discover it first through the immediate awareness of our own continuous self: we discover that we endure.

  Here finally is where intuition must challenge intellect, for intellect by its natural function transforms, and thereby falsifies, movement into static states. The truth that intuition discovers about reality is that it is continuous, that it cannot be reduced to parts, and that the creative process caused by the elan vital is irreversible. “To get a notion of this irreducibility and irreversibility,” says Bergson, “we must do violence to the mind, go counter to the natural bent of the intellect. But this is just the function of philosophy.” 

Whereas the intellect would describe evolution as a single, steady line moving upward through measurable levels, intuition suggests divergent tendencies at work. The vital impulse, says Bergson, moved in three discernible directions producing vegetative beings, anthropods, and vertebrates (including, finally, man), distinguishing intellect and intuition, he says that the emergence of intellect and matter occurred together, and these were intended to work together: “our intellect in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves – in short, to think matter.” Moreover, “matter is weighted with geometry.” But neither matter nor geometrical figures represent ultimate reality. The elan vital must itself resemble consciousness, from whence emerges life and all its creative possibilities. Evolution is creative precisely because the future is open, there is no preordained “final” goal; duration constantly endures, producing always genuinely novel events, like an artist who never knows precisely what he will create until he has created his work.